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AUSTRALIA AND THE EMPIRE

man," gives a sketch of this early Sydney Parliament which is worth preserving:—

"As a General Election and a partially representative Legislature were new things under the sun in Australia, and as the crisis at which the first election took place was a peculiarly trying one for the colony, the interest excited in all quarters was intense, and the result was by no means unsatisfactory. Indeed, for general ability, for extent and variety of information available for the business of legislation, for manly eloquence, for genuine patriotism, and for energetic and dignified action, I question whether the first Legislative Council in New South Wales has ever been surpassed by any Legislature out of England in the British Empire."

To justify this high eulogium Dr. Lang proceeds to enumerate half a dozen leading names, including that of Robert Lowe, whom he characterises as "a barrister of super-eminent ability and of brilliant oratorical powers." How came the newly arrived Fellow of Magdalen, it may be asked, so quickly to find his way into the Sydney Parliament? When Sir George Gipps, the first Governor of New South Wales, who was " hampered," as he would have said, by a body of Representatives, contemplated the